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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1855 edition. Excerpt: ...the various waters, become a-journal of our life. In riding over from Millerton to Salisbury (six miles), for the last time, probably, for years, we could not but remark what a hold the face of the country had got upon us. This round hill on the left, as we draw near the lakes, it is our hill! Hundreds of times we have greeted it, and been greeted; we have bounded over it; in imagination we have built under those trees, and welcomed friends to our air-cottage. How often, at sunset, have we looked forth north, east, south and west, and harvested from each direction great stores of beauty and of joy. As we wound around its base, a three-quarter's moon shining full and bright, the two lakes began to appear in silver spots through the trees. When we reached the summit of the road, they opened in full, and glimmered and shone like molten silver. For more beautiful sheets of water, and more beautiful sites from which to look at them, one may search far without finding. During a few days' absence the first frost has fallen The Reaper then has come! And this is the sharp sickle whose unwhetted edge will cut all before it! We had, before this, noticed the blood-red dogwood in the forests, and a few vines that blushed at full length, with here and there a maple in swamp-lands, that were prematurely taking bright colors. But now all things will hasten. Two weeks, and less, will bring October. That is the painted month. Every green thing loves to die in bright colors. The vegetable cohorts march glowing out of the year in flaming dresses, as if to leave this earth were a triumph and not a sadness. It is never Nature that is sad, but only we, that dare not look back on the past, and that have not its prophesy of the future in our bosoms. Men will sit...
